Quantum computing stocks have taken a sharp turn lower after a strong run through late 2025, leaving investors weighing their next move carefully.
IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) has fallen 37% over the past month, while D-Wave Quantum (NYSE: QBTS) has dropped 28% in the same period, rattling confidence in the sector.
Even Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), which plays in the quantum computing space indirectly, has seen its shares drift sideways as investors rebalance their AI-related positions.
The selloff raises a critical question for investors: are the beaten-down pure plays worth buying on the dip, or is Nvidia still the smarter bet?
Both IonQ and D-Wave are heavily reliant on federal government contracts and funding as a primary source of revenue, a strategy that carries its own set of risks.
IonQ has over $100 million in Air Force Research Lab contracts, plus work queued up with DARPA and Oak Ridge, giving it a more diversified government revenue base than its rival.
D-Wave holds a $1.6 million National Science Foundation grant and a $100 million letter of intent for future spending under the Chips Act, though neither represents firm orders from paying customers.
IonQ reported $64.7 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2026, representing a staggering 755% increase year over year, and raised its full-year guidance to between $260 million and $270 million.
D-Wave posted just $2.9 million in Q1 2026 revenue, an 81% decline compared to the prior year, largely because a one-time $12.6 million system sale inflated its 2025 figures.
D-Wave’s Q1 bookings did jump to $33.4 million, but its core revenue remains under pressure, and its near-term outlook appears highly dependent on the proposed Chips Act funding materializing.
Neither company has a clear path to profitability, with both still years away from generating the kind of returns that would justify returning capital to shareholders.
IonQ holds $3.1 billion in cash and equivalents, putting it in a considerably stronger financial position than D-Wave, which has approximately $588 million on hand.
Nvidia’s quantum strategy is built around creating foundational infrastructure that drives demand for its GPUs rather than competing directly with quantum hardware developers.
In October 2025, Nvidia launched NVQLink, an interconnect that links quantum processors to GPUs for real-time error correction and hybrid workloads, with seventeen quantum hardware developers signing on, including IonQ.
CUDA-Q, Nvidia’s open-source hybrid programming platform, serves as the control surface for NVQLink, effectively embedding Nvidia’s technology at the center of the quantum ecosystem.
The practical result is that every serious quantum computing program now requires racks of Blackwell GPUs alongside its qubits, regardless of which quantum hardware platform it uses.
Nvidia generated $81.6 billion in revenue in its fiscal first quarter of 2027, with $75.2 billion of that total coming from its data center segment alone.
The entire quantum computing industry remains, for Nvidia, a bolt-on opportunity layered onto a business already generating extraordinary sales and cash flow at scale.
Nvidia does not need to pick a winning quantum hardware company because every major player in the space already depends on its hardware and software platforms to operate.
For investors seeking exposure to the quantum computing theme with meaningfully lower risk, Nvidia presents a far more compelling case than either IonQ or D-Wave at this stage.
